1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to providing scan services to an image forming device, and more specifically, to methods and systems for providing scan services to a scanner in enterprise or business scanning environment.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In a Microsoft Distributed Scan Management environment (DSM), administrators manage scanning services for organizations with many users. DSM is implemented in Windows Server 2008 R2 and uses Web Services on Devices (WSD) protocol to integrate various devices into the environment.
In DSM, the various devices interact with a Microsoft Distributed Scan Server and a Microsoft Scan Management Console to provide solutions for scanning and post processing of scan data. The various devices (e.g., scanners, Multi-Function Printers, etc.), utilize Microsoft Distributed Scan Device (DSD) and Microsoft Distributed Scan Processing (DSP) compliant services to communicate with the Microsoft Distributed Scan Server and the Microsoft Scan Management Console. The DSD specification describes how scanning devices and services operate in a distributed scanning environment, and specify the device control model. The DSP specification describes how the scanning devices, services, and post processing of scan data operate in the DSM environment.
WS-Scan refers to Web Services on Devices (WSD) Scan Service. In WS-Scan, a scanner interacts with a personal computer (the client) to provide scanning solutions. The scanner and client utilize WS-Scan services to communicate with each other to orchestrate the scanning tasks. Because WS-Scan was introduced before DSM, application providers typically choose not to modify existing applications that currently use WS-Scan services, and therefore, a haphazard collection of both DSM and WS-Scan based scanners may be operating in a network. Further, users of the scanner may become easily confused about how to utilize WS-Scan destinations and DSM post scan processing services in such an environment in order to enable a scan workflow.
Thus, it is an ongoing challenge to enable scanning devices to efficiently operate within a DSM and a WS-Scan environment.